The new (sort of) support

Hi :)

I am still a fairly new player to DotA 2. I only really play support because I personally don't enjoy playing other roles (and I'm awful at them), but I feel as if I'm still missing some very important concepts.

I know my biggest problem is that I am way too passive and paranoid about dying. I am literally always building Tranquil Boots every game. Sure, I always buy/upgrade courier and make sure wards are up, but that's about the extent to which I feel useful. I generally play the lane babysitter, but once the hero I'm watching hits level 6 or starts leaving lane, I am completely lost. Usually I just stay in lane and push, but also, usually that ends with me getting killed.

When I play with my more experienced friends, they always nag on me for not carrying TPs, but that's because
1. I never know when to TP
2. I feel like TPs cost an arm and leg once I factor in wards and dust, etc.
3. Once I do TP into a team fight, there is so much going on that I have no idea what is happening or where my hero is and ohmygodiamjustsoconfused. But I think that's a separate problem of its own.

So yeah! I was wondering for you more experienced supports out there what you guys do--especially after the hero you're babysitting starts to leave lane. How do you keep up with the gold situation in regards to buying wards, sentries, dust, TPs, etc?

My fav two support heroes are CM and Phoenix--should that be a detail that matters.

Thank you for your help! (:

Hello there, Chells!
Im not the master of doto here, but I can gave you some advices.

1. You should want to TP when: defending towers(just when it is very necessary), engaging an upcoming teamfights, when an enemy dived your tower and if you come in it is a sure kill, ganking, etc...

2.Since the latest update, Town Portal Scroll's cost was reduced by 35 gold. Trust me, this changes things. TP scrolls are an important support item like Dust of Appearance and Sentry Wards. You should ALWAYS carry a TP scroll. Supports should generally buys items for utility, such as Scythe of Vyse, Eul's Scepter of Divinity, etc...

3. Once you hit the midgame, you generally want to start roaming around the map. Find opportunities at other lanes wheter it is ganks or pushes. As a support, you can't farm really well. Hence why hero kills are your best way to farm.

4. When playing support, you generally want to be either really defensive or really aggressive. Defensive heroes are lane supports: Treant Protector, Keeper of the Light, etc... Aggressive supports are roamers that can asist on kills with powerful disables: Lion, Ogre Magi, etc... Some supports can be both aggressive and defensive, like Crystal Maiden, Dazzle, etc....

5. Awareness and positioning is a key to play dota. Check the minimap often, and be sure to put yourself in the right spot. Even that one little spot during the laning phase is crucial for survival. For me, this is the hardest factor of playing dota. Heroes that can punish you for terroble positioning: Faceless Void, Lich, Kunkka, etc...

6. I should remind you to not try Phoenix. His abilities are all positioning based, and very much so. If you have terrible positioning, you should avoid playing Phoenix. Heroes that requires good positioning and should generally be avoided by newer players: Phoenix, Earth Spirit, Earthshaker, etc...



That is for now, I hope I helped in any way.
And welcome to the site!

If you are afraid of dying, then I would recommend you buying 3 basic support (but not only) items:

• Magic Stick, later Magic Wand
• Force Staff
• Mekansm

Magic Stick is the most useful, when enemy heroes near you will use their spells, and this will be a case when they will be trying to kill you. This cheap, yet efficient item is almost a must for squishy supports like Crystal Maiden.

Force Staff is an escape, initiation item that increases notably your mana pool and gives you some HP regen. It is a very common pick on almost any support. It allows you to also push other units, such as creeps or even heroes (both your allies and enemies). This item is rather cheap and it has one of the best utility in the game.

Mekansm is a team healing item that can often determine whether teamfight is won or lost. It stays relevant to about 35-40 minutes, but even later it might be useful for pushing (healing creeps or heroes with low HP). It also gives you a nice amount of armor and HP regen.

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As for Town Portal Scrolls - since 6.82 patch they cost only 100 gold, so you shouldn't be worried about that. I know how hard is a life of support, but TP Scroll gives a chance of defending a tower or turning a fight around.

Imagine that you are on the Dire and enemy team is pushing your T2 tower on the bottom lane. If enemies are far from tower, you can TP right next to the T2 tower and wait for your teammates/hide in the trees so that enemy can't see you. If they are already attacking your T2 tower, you want to TP next to your T3 tower (near your Melee and Ranged Barracks) and start defending from there.

If you like supports, I would recommend you trying Jakiro (in case you didn't). He is pretty bulky for a support and his skills doesn't cost that much mana. He is a nice pusher and anti-pusher. With decent starting HP you shouldn't be worried that much about dying so easily like with Crystal Maiden.

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After the laning phase is over (it happens usually when the first tower goes down) you want to group occasionally with your team and looking for occasions to get a kill. It's called ganking. Obviously, you are still aware of the map so that you can TP anywhere you are needed. If you can't spot the enemy and you feel like you won't be able to kill any of them, go to lane and farm creeps (if they are not carries around). You want to push lanes out a little bit before roaming, because enemy will be able to push very fast. You generally don't leave a lane when enemy creeps are near your tower. Push it back and go to the other lane. Watch a mini-map, look for colored crosses, look which color represents which hero, warn your teammates about enemy movement, suggest a gank, ask for help, buy wards. Ehh, I feel like old man giving obvious advice, sorry about that.

Well, this coming from someone who love to play Phoenix (not really that good, but, well....) and has played position 5 (hard support) almost as long as I started playing DotA simply because my friends are scumbag who doesn't want to become ward slave. Wait, first let me just say welcome to dotaFire! Hope to see you more :D

1. First of all, Scroll of town portal IS essential, no but, no if, it just is. If you think that it's hard to know when to TP, I'd say that it's better if you start learning (especially the part where you said that you have a hard time in team fight, early on support's abilities in team fight are essential). This is a very useful guide about TP scroll, and you might learn a lot from it.
2. If your carry go out from lane, I suggest to take that chance to gank possible heroes (especially that both Crystal Maiden and Phoenix are heroes that are exceptional in ganking). However, if there is no chance to gank (which is quite unlikely), I propose to just keep on pulling creep (in case you don't know, check here) and use the chance to farm up. However, do not forget to keep checking the map and TP whenever needed. Remember that helping your team is more needed than farm, especially for supports.
3. If you're afraid of dying, I'd say that you need to learn how not to die, such as juking or buying survivability items. Especially for Crystal Maiden, early game Bracer helps a lot. Otherwise, Magic Wand is almost a must for most heroes. Phoenix is a rather hard hero (I have died lots of time because of poor positioning Supernova), I'd suggest that you try easier heroes like Keeper of the Light or Lion. However, you have to remember that it's better if a support die than the carry (sad but true), so if your carry is almost dead, sometimes suiciding to safe that carry is a wiser thing to do than escaping.
4. Most importantly, CHECK THIS OUT, it's one of the best (if not the best) guide to support made by the God of Guide himself

Well, hope that help. Would love to help more if you need me :)

If you're worried about dying, then I'd recommend Abaddon as a Hero you should learn. Easy to learn, annoying to play against, and you can pull of clutch plays to save allies from certain doom. Problem with Abaddon is that he's better as a #4 support, aka farming support, than a #5, aka ward *****, so you're going to need some dosh to be peak efficiency. His abilities, though, are fully item independant so even with just brown boots, wand, wards and TP he's still useful to the team.

Hello Chells. I myself am a passive player that usually plays support, so maybe I can offer some help. A good hero to work with would be Jakiro, Dazzle, or Warlock, who reward you for defensive plays.

The first rule of Dota is to try to understand all the heroes, what they do, what they are strong and weak at, and what abilities and items counter each hero. This is what creates Dota 2's famous learning curve.

The best way to do this is to read up on each hero, but also play each of them yourself on bot mode. A coach would do you a lot of good in these games to see what mistakes you're making. Try finding one around here, I'm sure someone will help you, especially if it means that this game will have a less concentrated audience.

So hopefully this will help with the tp scroll thing; http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/guide/tp-scroll-what-to-know-4943

With feeling like a tp scroll costs an arm and a leg, learn to know what you need and don't need, eg teamfight happening mid and you want to buy wards, don't buy a tp scroll instead jump in and hopefully win fight, then use gold from assists to buy wards + dust etc.

its really a balance and if your playing with friends, ask them every now and again to let you get some last hits. Trust me as a support 2-3 last hits go a long way.

Right and now with the teamfight problem.
Since you play 2 heroes with AoE spells, cast them on most of the opposing teams heroes and as CM cast ulti in the middle (and hope your team distracts them from you[high dangerous]) as Phoenix cast Fire Spirits and try to hit all opposing heroes, then jump into a Sun Ray to keep your team going and if ur on low health ult.

thats pretty much it as a support; but over all, stay near the edge, spam spells and only jump into the middle if you are confident you can pull ulties, channel spells without dying AND losing teh team fight.

Hope this helps and welcome to the forums.

Coming from a guy that plays support in 99% of his games, and when not, playing Earth Spirit - I can confirm that Phoenix is a poor choice for playing support. He needs quick levels to get Supernova, because the earlier you have it, the harder it will become for your enemies to kill you - or the nova.


For now, while you are learning, don't play these unconventional supports that have high expectations : Skywrath Mage, Sand King, Mirana, Rubick etc. While Sky might look easy, he's not, knowing when to use ultimate and who to use it on in a fight is not that easy.

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Suggesting you pick up something a tad easier, I noticed you said you enjoy playing Crystal Maiden. She's very good, but she dies quite quickly unfortunately. You could try playing Lich or Venomancer, these are the 2 go to heroes I recommend for people not that experienced.


Lich is quite easy to begin with. He has a pseudo - AoE nuke, Frost Blast, ice armor, which adds armor to an ally, and slows enemy attackers, sacrifice which helps with mana problems and Chain Frost which is amazing in teamfights. Very good lane support since he can harass out pretty much everyone thanks to Frost Blast and keeping his mana up with sacrifice. Plus, sacrifice kills one of your creeps, so you essentially deny enemy experience and gold with it, and you gain some experience when using it.


Venomancer is pretty straight forward as well. While not as tanky as Lich is, you could argue that his kit allows for more survivability thanks to the abundance of slows he has. 3 of his skills can slow, which is really good, and they all deal damage over time. Venomous Gale is awesome in ganks and teamfights alike, Poison Sting is great, plague wards combined with Poison Sting can hurt and can enable for some effective pushes, and Poison Nova is awesome, just because you press a button and there's your entire contribution to the fight. Once you gale and nova, you can die in peace, knowing you used everything.

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About using TPs, it factors 1 important skill a player will only develop during playing the game : Map Awareness . You need to know when to TP, where to TP. This is where the minimap and the wards you placed factor in so much. Since you are the support, you don't have to last hit, meaning you can keep an eye on the minimap for your allies.

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And lastly : Try to stay in the fog of war as much as possible while playing support. If the enemies cannot see you on the map, it means that you could be anywhere, even if you are not. The fear factor will settle in, especially with supports that are exceptional at ganking like Venomancer, Crystal Maiden, Skywrath Mage etc. Meaning they will play defensively, giving your other lanes an easier time.


What it comes off to in the end is combining all of these agaist the multitude of team combinations there can be. While some might make sense, others might not, this is the beauty of Dota - every single game is different.

A couple of recommendations for support:

Lion
Lich
Omniknight (he's really tanky and extremely hard to kill, but needs mana management)
Sven support. AOE stun, escape, and cleave so you can push (not farm xD).

As he's a more experienced player, you should probably go with what Wulfstan says at the end of the day, but here's my 2p on being effective as a Dual Lane Support.

Step 1. Never pick a Melee Support in a 2 vs 2 Lane - I think you've already covered this though since you like playing Crystal Maiden] and [[Phoenix. Being able to Harrass from a Safe distance is pretty important as there is practically nothing you can do in a Dual Lane as a Melee Support.


Step 2. Pick a Hero that can spam Damage over Time in some way or form from a safe distance - a safe distance being at least 600 Units away (further than most Hero's Auto Attacks can reach). You're going to be sitting in Lane leeching Exp and Harrassing for most of the early game, but constantly forcing your opponent's HP to drop dramatically will really make them miserable.

Step 3. The best defense is a good offense! <}3

The best way to ensure that the guy you're Laning with gets Farm is by Killing/Harrassing whoeverhe's Laning against out of the Lane. Silencer's Curse of the Silent is a good ability for this, not only does it hit both Heroes, not only does it drain their Mana rapidly from lvl2 onwards, it also hurts a lot. Silencer isn't a very good Support, but since you're new, you should find he's both fun in Lane and effective in Teamfights for now.

Step 4. The best place for Supports in Teamfights is waaaaaaaaay back behind your Team

In Teamfights, hang back a bit, you should be in Range to Auto-Attack anyone that dives past your Tank, but no closer to the fight than that. Use Global Silence if you think the other Team are about to use their Spells a lot, you'll make mistakes but don't let that get to you, you're new, it'll happen no matter what. If you use Global Silence or the other Team have already used all of their Ultis, then follow up with Curse of the Silent for some extra Damage.

Step 5. Items

Generally, these are the types of Items you should be considering as a Support, Boots upgrades can depend on the Situation and Hero you choose, so it would be best to read a guide on that Hero to get to know them better.



Anything after these is a Luxury Item for a Position 5 tbh